


Silver Bells, Silent Bells

by Emeraldawn



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Christmas, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-16
Updated: 2012-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-18 19:22:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldawn/pseuds/Emeraldawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Stiles learned to play the piano.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver Bells, Silent Bells

**Author's Note:**

> Written for: awdt - "I am with the band." On Live Journal.

Stiles sat at the piano in the living room, playing one of his mother’s favorite holiday songs, “Silver Bells.” It was a holiday tradition for him to play the song on the old upright on his first day of winter break. Listening to the notes flow, Stiles would remember how his mother would love to sit next to him as he played. How she would close her eyes and sing the lyrics. She used to tell him that as a child she would sit next to her father as he played the song, singing together. Stiles also remembered how he managed to learn to play the piano in the first place.

 

He had asked his mother one December if he could learn to play a cool musical instrument. Young Stiles came up with the idea after seeing too many reality TV shows that had young teens trying to make it big in music. Stiles thought if he started at the young age of seven, he would have plenty of time to learn to play, write songs and do whatever band stuff that people do so he could make it big. Because, of course, being in the band was cooler then saying, “I'm with the Band,” and he was on a mission to be cool. Also, TV showed that all the cool people had the most fun in high school, and high school was the last place you got to go before you became a boring adult or, worse, a parent.

So Stiles asked his mother if he could learn to play music. Of course, in his young mind, he thought that his mother would get him something cool like drums or a guitar. But, much to his shock and dismay, he woke Christmas morning to an old upright piano sitting along the wall in the living room with a big bow wrapped around it. He wanted to tell his mother that’s not what he meant, that he needed to learn to play with something of a coolness factor of 11, but seeing the look on his mom’s face, like she was holding back a river of tears, stopped his mouth from ever opening. 

“Stiles, when you told me you want to learn music, I just had to give you this. This piano was my father’s. He would play it all the time when I was a child. Since you were so young and I didn't know how to play well, I had it stored for safekeeping.” 

The grand-da card! Stiles knew at a young age that anything to do with his grand-da made his mother all girly and weepy. She loved to tell stories about her amazing father, before he passed on when she was sixteen. He was even Stiles’s namesake! Even though Stiles thought the name sounded like something given to an old Polish shoemaker, his mother saddled him with it because of her love for her father. And, now he had a large, uncool piano he had to learn to play. Suckiest Christmas Ever!

 

It wasn't long before Stiles was taking piano lesions twice a week. He had to learn notes and scales and beat counts. It was like learning a second language! And the songs you were taught to play, like She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain, and Hickory, Dickory, Dock, were so boring! The best song he learned to play in the first music work book was When the Saints Go Marching In, and it still was an uncool song. 

But even though Stiles dreaded piano practice, he sat down every evening, then slowly tapped out the songs on the keys, all while his mother sat in the chair beside him and listened with a smile on her face. When he would finish a song where he hit so many sour notes he was sure their creators were dying again from broken ear drums, his mother would tell him that it was better them last time. 

 

All this changed when Stiles turned 10. That was the year his mother got sick. She would still sit next to him when he learned to play harder music, like As Time Goes By, and Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmatians, when she was home. Her afternoons seemed to be filled with doctor appointments, treatment times, and rest. As the year got later, his father would be doing all the cooking or just bring home take out and his mother would most often be sleeping. 

Then came Halloween, and instead of trick-or-treating with his friends, he and his father moved his mother to the hospital. That Christmas, he asked his friend Scott to record him playing Silver Bells on his father’s video recorder. It was the last time his mother got to watch him play the song.

 

Mrs. Celina Stilinski passed away on a rainy day in January. The rain did not stop until the day after the funeral. Scott's mom told him that even the heavens cried for their loss. Stiles thought it was fitting, since her name meant the moon.

After the grave site service, the Stilinski house was overrun with well-wishers, remembering stories of a happier time. The kitchen was commandeered by the wives of his father’s fellow law enforcement personnel, keeping the dining room table full of food and stockpiling the refrigerator with enough food to last the men weeks if they planned it right. Stiles’s father was surrounded by other deputies, offering a steady hand on his shoulder and a watchful eye on the liquor consumed. And all the while, Stiles sat on his piano bench with his friend next to him. He didn't know how long he sat there, head bowed, hands clenching his knees.

It just didn't feel right, everyone telling him that his mother was still with him and was watching over him. It didn't matter because he still couldn't see her smile any more, hear her singing as he tried to learn new songs. What good was thinking her spirit was around if she couldn’t be with him? Stiles wanted to scream at them to shut up. He wanted to run away from those do-gooders that weren’t doing any good. But he knew that it would hurt his father, and it was his job to watch over him. He had promised his mother before she passed. So he did the next best thing: he played his piano. 

When his fingers hit the first notes, the talking stopped. Most people in the room didn't know that Stiles knew how to play the piano. Over the years he had enjoyed learning it, as a connection to his mother, but he still felt it was uncool. Stiles closed his eyes to block out the people around him as he played. He pictured her hair, her smile, her laughter. It was the last time Stiles played Imagine.

 

After the funeral, Stiles couldn't get himself to play the piano. The memory of his mother was too much. Stiles poured his free time into video games, books, and the internet. Remembering the promise to his mother, even if he was only eleven (almost twelve), Stiles looked out for his dad. He kept the house clean, and learned from Scott's mother how to cook. He read up on healthy foods and would warn his father about his drinking. He also saw more doctors that year. Doctors for his ADHD. Doctors for his panic attacks. Doctors to ask him how he felt about his mother passing. 

Stiles followed this schedule for the better part of the year. It wasn't until winter break that Stiles even thought about his mother and the piano. On the first day of break, his father was working and Scott and his mother had left to visit family out of town. Stiles was alone in a house that was bare of all holiday cheer. His father hadn't decorated and, until now, Stiles hadn't minded. Unable to watch movies and TV specials on families having happy holidays after overcoming some trouble or realizing Santa was real, Stiles instead thought about his mother. She had loved Christmas and would decorate every year. A big tree. Lights covering every inch of the yard. Scented candles everywhere. She would bake cookies and make candies to give to the neighbors and for his father to take to work. But, now, there would be none of that.

Stiles couldn't believe that it was just two years ago that he was playing Christmas songs on the piano while his mother sang and decorated the tree. She had told him stories, between songs, of when she was a child and her father would play carols on the same piano while she and her mother adorned the tree with lights and trinkets.

Sometimes she would get quiet in her story telling and remember the first Christmas after her father passed. She said her mother hadn’t wanted to fill the house with seasonal cheer. But, she had told her mother that father wouldn't want that, that for her to stop living because he was gone would have broken his heart. 

Stiles knew that if all those people that told him his mother was still with him were right, she was heartbroken now watching Stiles and his father go through the motions of living. And he couldn't have that. Was Stiles, at the young age of twelve, going to spend the rest of his life ignoring anything that reminded him of his mother? What if he had children? Would they grow up not knowing the joys of Christmas? No birthday cake? No piano?

Decision made, Stiles went out to the garage and pulled some of the Christmas boxes down. He couldn’t get a tree without his father's help, but there were enough other decorations, like his grandmother's Christmas village, he could bring out. By the time his father got home, Stiles had decorations in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. He pulled boxes out to the porch to do the outside tomorrow, when it was both warmer and light out. He was sitting at his piano, going through sheet music, deciding whether he still could play some of these pieces after almost a year of not playing anything.

“What’s all this, Son?” his father asked as he entered the house, carrying a large bag of hamburgers and fries.

“What’s what, Dad?” Stiles asked, not even looking up from his music.

“Well, for starters, there were no Christmas decorations up when I left the house today. Also, I haven't seen you at that piano since your mom died. Is everything okay?” his dad asked, sitting down next to Stiles on the bench.

Stiles took a deep breath and looked up at his father. He didn't look angry that Stiles had brought out his mother's Christmas stuff. He looked concerned, like Stiles would have a break down right in front of him. Stiles decided that his father would understand the truth.

“Well Dad, I was alone in the house today and got to thinking. I remember about Christmas with mom, and the stories she would tell about her childhood Christmases. Remember what she said she told her mom after Grand-da died?”

“Yeah, she said he would have been heartbroken if he saw them stop being alive just because he was no longer living.”

“So, what if those ladies at the funeral are telling the truth? What if Mom was right here with us? I can't be the one to break her heart Dad. I want Mom to be happy, and we deserve to be happy too.”

Stiles sat in silence with his father, thinking over what his Mom would do. He was pretty sure his father was doing the same. After a few minutes in silence, Stiles started to fidget; what if his father was upset at Stiles? Did Stiles take it too far by throwing Christmas in his father face?

Before Stiles could blow into a full panic attack, his fathered answered Stiles's silent questions. “You're right, Son. Your mother would have never wanted that. But, I can't just jump into acting like I was before she died. My heart is broken because she’s not with us anymore.” Stiles's dad put his arm around him and pulled him close, “But we can try. I’m willing to try. And first thing, I want you to play me some Christmas songs, while I go set this food up for dinner.” 

Stile kept to the upbeat Christmas music that his father liked. They sang together for some of them, and his father added encouragement on areas he was rusty in. Time seemed to pass quickly for the two of them, and before Stiles knew it, his father was calling an end to the impromptu festivities, stating he needed to be at work early in the morning, and Stiles himself needed to rest some so they could work on putting up the lights that were left on the porch.

That night, Stiles lay awake just thinking about his mother, remembering her joy and the last time she got to hear Stiles play. It was the video that Scott had filmed for him last Christmas. Stiles had insisted that she be buried with the disk, so she would always have him and music with her. But, it didn’t feel like Christmas without playing Silver Bells to her.

Stiles got out of bed and crept down the hall to make sure his father was still asleep. Finding him sawing logs, Stiles went downstairs to the piano. Placing a picture that he had of his mother on the piano top, Stiles took a seat on the bench. He sat there for a bit, looking at the picture of his mother smiling at him, just like he remembered.

Placing his hands on the keyboard, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re going to have to forgive me, Mom. I might be a bit rusty.” Then he let his fingers dance over the keys as he played Silver Bells one more time, for his mother.

**Author's Note:**

> I could see Stiles playing the piano, I think he has the hands for it. 
> 
> I was thinking fun and light hearted when I sat down, what I got was sadness and Christmas.
> 
> EDIT 1/11/13 - Errors fixed I love my beta killpurakat


End file.
